GRA Championship 10-12-2008

Saturday 10-11-2008
so i spent the night at Jason Flores' place to get ready to setup my car as well as his car for Sunday's event. I had a lot of work to do on my own car for a change. I finally got my shocks back from Jeff Wong at ProPartsUSA/TRI-Point Engineering Thursday night. Boy was i excited to see these things. Now i can tune out the excessive body roll the car was having. So now onto the day...

First I had to remove the shocks that were on my car temporarily (jason's). After that was done i got to assembling my new shocks and new spring rates. I thought that I might have an issue with the 8" spring in the back, but it ended up being alright. After the rears were installed i had issues trying to set a base ride height. I guess i was just tired already because i couldn't think straight.

Now onto the rears... My old rear springs were now going up front and at this time i wanted to lower the front a little bit more. BLAH BLAH BLAH... the car was corner balanced and ready for the next day's event.

Later that afternoon Jason had a treat for both of us to be able to get into Formula Drift in Irwindale. We were given hardpasses to be able to hangout in the infield with all the famous drifters and marketing companies.

Sunday - Championship
1st Run group... the crappiest run group I hate to be in.
1) tires dont get hot enough
2) haven't worked course to get a better look at the course

1st run: total wash... i hit the first cone coming out of the start... lally gagged around course trying to find the grip limit. I had no issue with the rear end... I loved the way my new setup handles. I can now get closer and drive the course exactly how i wanted to.

57.xxx +2

2nd run: My shocks were 1 turn stiff and i still had issues with braking. I had a feeling that because my front shocks are still sports; that i maybe diving too much up front causing an increase in camber. Thus poor braking... So for my next run i decided to stiff the front 1 1/4 turn towards stiff.

61.xxx +1

3rd Run: It actually helped out a lot and i was able to put down a decent time. I took the course slightly more aggressive, but pretty much attacked it like i was driving San Diego.

53.1xx

X-Runs - Fun Runs
So... i later find out that after tuning the front shocks and backing off a bit. The reason behind me being 0.5-1.0 second slower than everyone else was that LA has more grip and I wasn't comfortable going that fast into corners. Thanks to Alex for showing me how he drives his Corolla; I was able to see how fast he was entering the corners and transferred that over to my car. After my day of figuring out things i was able to put down a clean 51.935 in the afternoon (warm). Now i just need to set myself up mentally and be able to put down my top times within class and right off the bat.